US signals that reviewing role in top UN rights body

GENEVA:

The US Trump administration is reviewing its participation in the top United Nations human rights body, with an eye to reform and a balanced agenda that ends the forum's "obsession with Israel", a senior US official said on Wednesday.

"In order for this Council to have any credibility, let alone success, it must move away from its unbalanced and unproductive positions," Erin Barclay, US deputy assistant secretary of state, told the UN Human Rights Council.

"As we consider our future engagements, my government will be considering the Council's actions with an eye toward reform to more fully achieve the Council's mission to protect and promote human rights."

The United States is currently an elected member of the 47-state Geneva forum where its three-year term ends in 2019.